Worried neighbours seek answers after sinkhole swallows home

Although it was hard to see the damage from the roadway, a sinkhole that's six to 7.5-metre deep and spans about half of this home developed sometime during the wee morning hours of Sept. 3. (SaltWire Network)

People living near a Falmouth home that partially disappeared into a large sinkhole have reason to worry, says an expert on topography.

“If I were their neighbour, I’d be concerned,” said Tim Webster, a geomatics research scientist who has been helping to map topographic data from around the province for years.

“I would definitely be concerned. I would probably get somebody in there to do maybe a ground-penetrating radar survey or maybe some other surveys to see how close the groundwater table is.”

The two-storey, four-bedroom home that Chris Strickey and his family had lived in for the past decade began to descend into a giant sinkhole in the early morning hours Sunday. The home, which was built on a concrete slab 12 years ago, two years before the Strickeys purchased it, can’t be saved.

Now, neighbours in the Falmouth subdivision are worried.

Debby Rose said about 40 people gathered at her home in Falmouth on Wednesday to share information about what befell the Strickey family’s brick and wood home.

Rose, who lives right beside the sinking house, said a municipal official also attended the informal meeting and assured the group they will be given the results of a report being done by a geotechnical engineer.

Early Sunday, Heather Strickey said she awoke to a loud clamour and found the first floor of her house had virtually collapsed into a gaping hole, estimated to be up to nine metres deep.

Everyone got out of the house safely.

“Of course, the main thing is that everybody is safe, absolutely,” Chris Strickey said on Tuesday. “It’s tough for my family because everybody has just in essence the clothes on their backs. There are lots of memories that can’t be replaced and that will be lost.”

Rose says neighbours want to know whether it was known that the ground was unstable and, if so, why the residential development was approved.

Webster, who works with the Nova Scotia Community College at the Centre of Geographic Sciences, said the Lidar laser technology he uses confirms that the landscape around Falmouth has a karst topography, meaning it is formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as gypsum or limestone and it is characterized by underground drainage systems with sinkholes and caves.

But Webster said even if homeowners determine that an underground risk exists, they do not have much recourse.

“That’s a good question, but no, not in my opinion,” he said when asked what homeowners could do to mitigate the potential sinkhole problem.

And the risk or problem prevails “anywhere that you have those soluble rocks and minerals that the groundwater can dissolve.”